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THE NATIONAL SACRIFICE. 



J± SEEMON 

PREACHED ON THE SUNDAY BEFORE THE 

DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT, 

AND 

TWO ADDRESSES, 

ON THE SUNDAY AND WEDNESDAY FOLLOWING, 

IN 

St. Clement's Cljttrdj, |pteMp|p, 



Rev. Treadwell Walden, 

THE RECTOR. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

SHE EM AX & CO., PRINTERS. 

1865. 



Rev. Treadwell Walden. 

Dear Sir: Desiring to have in permanent form the Sermon 
preached by you on the evening of the 9th instant, and the 
Addresses of the Kith and 19th instant, we respectfully re- 
quest that you will furnish us with copies for publication. 
With much respect, we remain yours, &c, 

John Lambert, Jno. A. McAllister, 

H. Henderson, George X. Allen, 

P. P. Morris, H. C. Thompson, 

S. S. Moon, Henry Norris, 

Ephraim Clark, Edward H. Eowley. 

Philadelphia, April 25, 1865. 



Philadelphia, May 1, 1865. 
GENTLEMEN: 

I have hesitated a good deal whether or not to give you 
the Sermon and Addresses you so kindly request, as they all, 
under the circumstances of their composition, have too much 
of an impromptu character to be worthy of a permanent form. 

However, as a memorial of an extraordinary moment, and 
as a true reflection of the feeling of the congregation which 
heard them, I venture to place them at your disposal. 

With much respect, sincerely yours, 

TEEADWELL WALDEN. 

Messrs. John Lambert, John A. McAllister, 

Henry Henderson, George N. Allen, 

P. Pemberton Morris, Henry C. Thompson, 

Samuel S. Moon, Henry Xorris, 

Ephraim Clark, Edward H. Rowley. 



A SERMON, 



Preached on Sunday Evening, April 9, 1865, being the Sinhav 
following the capture of richmond, and preceding the 
Death of the President. 



"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and 
that the whole nation perish not." — john 12 : 49. 

This hallowed day has witnessed a strange conflict 
of emotion in the religions mind. A new incident has 
unexpectedly entered it, which has no doubt seemed 
to many at unfortunate variance with the feelings to 
which, for years, the Church has been moved on this 
especial Sunday of all the year. It is the Sunday 
which opens upon Passion-week, — the week of dark- 
ness and sorrow, which contains the day when our 
Saviour was crucified, and became the one offering 
for the sins of the world. Every sympathy and 
emotion of the Christian heart comes to the surface 
now. Even the thoughtless world feels the over- 
shadowing gloom of the approaching period. The 
faces that fill the sanctuary are grave and sad. The 
ritual moves like a funeral train shrouded in black. 
Only one object fills the imagination, — the innocent, 



6 



sinless, disinterested, devoted Son of Man, suffering 
punishment for sins He never did, hanging on the 
cruel Roman cross, and dying in unutterable agony of 
body and mind, in order that we might live. 

This is the spectacle that occupies our hearts, and 
yet, in the very midst of these gradually darkening days, 
there has been such a public joy abroad, such a won- 
derful deliverance vouchsafed, and such a triumph 
achieved, that we have been enjoined by the civil au- 
thority, and moved by our own impulse, to sing hosan- 
nas to Almighty God, and acknowledge, in joyful and 
grateful prayers, that it was His right hand and holy 
arm which hath given us the victory. 

The sad face and the glad face, the sad heart and 
the glad heart, are they compatible'? Or shall the 
close reality of a national victory eclipse the remote 
reality, but most near and tender memory, of a conflict 
in its intensest hour of suffering and of blood] 

But are you really called to engage in services that 
are incompatible, and to the expression of opposite feel- 
ings \ I think not. I think that if you put the merely 
superficial feeling aside, and descend into the deeper 
considerations which underlie the jubilee, that, while 
the joy will last, it will be such a joy as will add 
strength and definiteness to the annual sentiment of 
this day. Doubtless it appears strange to you that I 
venture to declare as much, and yet I shall hope, be- 
fore I close, to show, and without recourse either to 
fancy or ingenuity, that hardly any other Sunday could 



have been so appropriate as this. More than that: I 
shall hope, by the simplest evolution of my subject, to 
deepen your love for the Saviour of your soul, even 
while trying to deepen your gratitude to God for being 
the Saviour of your country. 

I take you back, therefore, to the events which sur- 
round my text. 

The life of Jesus was drawing to a close. The final 
day of His life-long sacrifice was at hand, and His suf- 
ferings increased as they drew near the period of their 
culmination. The contradiction of sinners was now ap- 
proaching the moment of personal violence. He had 
just performed the most startling and wonderful of all 
His miracles, by raising Lazarus from the dead. The 
event took place in close neighborhood to the Holy 
City, and at the very moment when the dense multi- 
tudes of the Passover season were beginning to assem- 
ble. At no time in the year was Jerusalem so astir, and 
the Hebrew heart under so much excitement. This 
excitement was not only religious, but patriotic. The 
temple was theirs, but the city was under the Roman 
yoke. For several years, however, their spiritual leaders 
had been under strange and increasing apprehension 
of danger from a different quarter. The growing influ- 
ence of Jesus of Nazareth, and His absolute antagonism 
to them, shown oh every occasion, ahd always to their 
exposure and discomfiture, for awhile diverted their 
thoughts from the present usurpation to the fear of a 
more legitimate but not less dethroning power. But 



8 

this last miracle, in the very midst of the Galilean and 
Jndean throng, on the verge of their most sacred season, 
compelled them to take instant measures, as they 
thought, for their safety. 

The Sanhedrim assembled to see what could be 
done. Caiaphas, the High Priest, heard the debate, 
and at last interposed his counsel with the whole 
weight of his personal and official influence : and it 
instantly prevailed. It would seem, from the record, 
that he was inspired like. the old magian Balaam, to 
utter more than he comprehended, and yet to utter 
the very thing that appealed most to an indefinite but 
powerful sentiment in the Hebrew mind. To him it 
came like a sudden thought of his own wisdom, a 
subtle political measure, which would remove all fear 
or hesitation from the Priests around him, and bring 
about at once the destruction of Jesus. Indeed, to use 
a very familiar phrase of to-day, he succeeded in "firing" 
the Hebrew "heart." 

"Ye know nothing at all," he exclaimed, after hear- 
ing them say "What do we"? This man doeth many 
miracles. If we let him thus alone all men will 
believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take 
away our place and nation." "Ye know nothing at 
all," said he, "nor consider that it is expedient for us 
that one man should die for the people, and that the 
whole nation perish not." 

To his auditors it was the enunciation of a great 
and overwhelming truth, one inwrought with their 



9 



very constitution. From the clays of Adam and of 
Abraham they had been familiar with the thought of 
sacrifice. Millions of animals had died in their stead, 
and now, this seditious opponent of their present pre- 
tensions, this man, so full of what they chose to think 
diabolic power, and so rapidly gaining influence over 
the masses, to their most certain undermining, if sacri- 
ficed, could prevent the destruction of the nation. 
To Caiaphas it was an unscrupulous use of a mere 
expedient close to his sacerdotal hand, but to St. John, 
who recorded the incident many years afterward, it 
was the release, and bursting forth of the fact and 
sentiment of sacrifice which had been slumbering in 
the Hebrew ritual for two thousand years. 

Now, through a High Priest, it had found, uninten- 
tionally, its unsealment. At last the High Priest, full 
of a political, not a religious, purpose, had opened, with 
unwary hand, the chambers of prophecy, and, behold ! 
the real sacrifice appeared, and the true High Priest 
was revealed. Caiaphas unwittingly disrobed and 
deposed himself by using the divine intelligence of his 
office to advance a political object. In a few days from 
that perversion of his calling, the vail of the temple, 
which he alone was allowed to draw aside, was rent 
from the top to the bottom. The priest, the sacrifice, 
and the holy place disappeared together. 

But you observe the identity in the mind of the 
priest, and in the mind of the council, of two things, 
never separate, never incompatible, either in the He- 



10 



brew mind or in the Divine mind. Their church and 
their country were interchangeable names for the same 
thing; their religion and their political constitution 
were identical and intertwining systems. One was 
never thought of without the other. Body and soul 
were not more absolutely one. To save the nation was 
to save the people, to save the people was to save the 
nation. The error of Caiaphas began in his incapacity 
to appreciate or to sustain this original divine unity. 
His religion had lost its true character, and his patriot- 
ism its true object. He was neither truly a priest of 
God nor truly a friend of the people. His mediator- 
ship had passed away. And, therefore, while he spoke 
the truth, he spoke it in the dark, and brought about 
a result which he never desired and never anticipated. 
His short-sighted material counsel in the temporary 
interest of a people occupying an obscure corner of the 
world, has turned out to be in the interest of the whole 
world of mankind forever and ever. 

But you must remember this one thing : that it was 
in the anxiety of a national solicitude, and in the stress 
of a national danger, that the spiritual cross was up- 
reared, and the spiritual Christ was hung thereon. 

Tliere teas a divine principle at ivork, — a principle 
which could bring about the salvation of a state or of 
a soul, — a principle which could work in either tempo- 
ral or eternal things — a principle for the world or for 
the universe, for an individual or for the whole mass 



11 



of mankind. It held its place equally in all. It was 
not to be omitted in anything. 

I mean the principle of sacrifice. 

On this principle is everything in nature built, and 
by virtue of it everything in nature grows; Yon 
already know 7 that the Gospel which has been preach* d 
for ages, which appeals to your hearts, which appeals 
to your minds, which has readied yon in every possible 
form, in a form that yon have respected, and in a form 
that yon have shrunk from, and in a form that you have 
been tempted to despise, that has sometimes come to 
you through natures unrefined, and through intellects 
uncultivated, which has had expressions abhorrent to 
you, and yet a spirit withal most powerful, which has 
come to you in all the prismatic colors of the divers 
human minds through which it has spoken, — you 
already know that, whether w r eak or strong, dull or 
brilliant, true or false in minor things, the terrible 
vitality by which it lives, and by which it moves you, 
despite yourself, is this divine principle of sacrifice. 

But, perhaps, you have never thought of the same 
thing as underlying your own daily life, and accounting 
for so much that is strange in it. You have beheld the 
great doctrine as it was supremely illustrated in Christ, 
but never dreamed that you had your share of it in your 
own nature, and that you were also made to illustrate it. 

Whenever you live in a relation to another by 
which you arc impelled by your own heart, or com- 
pelled, by the circumstances of the case, to <jio tip 



12 



something, yield something, devote something, which 
is your own and which you value, to Mm, that is sac- 
rifice. Turn wherever you will, and instances enough 
will appear to further define this general definition. 
No man lives entirely to himself, he is obliged to live 
for others ; others live upon him, and he lives upon 
them, and that sustenance which is thus mutually de- 
rived comes from each individual by depleting him. 
There is no use in resisting the principle. We are made 
as much to give as we are made to receive, and that 
life is noblest, therefore, which moves as earnestly and 
generously outward as inward. 

There are occasions when the impulse is wanting and 
duty alone compels the act, but there are conditions, 
also, when nature impels too ardently for hesitation to 
be thought of. What does the mother refuse her child 
in the days of its helplessness and utter dependence'? 
She gives of her life-blood, to save it. Through hours 
of weariness and pain that inexhaustible love pours 
out its bodily strength, and endures the extremest ten- 
sion of mind and heart, rather than one little need 
should not be supplied, or one instant of suffering be 
felt. And in any other and lesser form of love the 
same thing takes place in its proportion. We are al- 
ways giving up to one another, and even the smallest 
act of the kind is part of the great law of sacrifice, 
and part of the great duty of self-sacrifice. 

Carry this also into the great things of life, and see 
men expending themselves soul and body in some great 



13 



cause, living in utter engrossment of feeling and faculty 
in it, an enthusiasm burning away their vitals, and a 
strength given to that for which they labor, taken for- 
ever away from themselves. All this giving forth, this 
giving forth is sacrifice. 

But I come to a deeper part of the principle. Sac- 
rifice, whether voluntary or involuntary, is vicarious. 
Vicarious means in the place of done for or suffered 
instead of another. And here we open the books of a 
terrible law. There is so much and no more given in 
this life. All cannot have it or share it. Some one 
must yield in order that another may receive. Two of 
you are equally anxious to do the same thing. Under 
the circumstances both cannot. The one who yields, 
offers the sacrifice; the one who indulges, enjoys by 
virtue of the other's deprivation. 

Can you think of anything that does not stand on 
this pedestal of suffering, that does not root itself in 
this soil of pain"? I have but little time to delineate 
the principle further — the circumstances of every one 
will furnish abundant illustration. But you have prob- 
ably little thought that the great principle of vicarious 
sacrifice on which your conception of Christ is formed, 
actually lives among you, and in such minute forms as 
this. 

In things of destiny and necessity, also, it is the 
great fact of God and of Nature. So much is to befall 
us, and the question is,-ow whom shall it falU If it 
fall on one, it cannot fall on another; that other is re- 



14 



lieved. So many thousand missiles will be flung into 
the bosom of an army of a hundred thousand men on 
a certain battle-day. The heart that receives a bullet 
is a sacrifice instead of some one else ; on account of 
its outpouring blood, another life remains untouched. 
The two or three thousand men that lie prone on the 
field, dead and cold, are they who died that the rest of 
the army might live. 

So in everything — great or small. There is so much 
to happen, so much to be endured, so much to be un- 
dertaken, and we are drawn up before the impending 
thing, whatever it may be : on whomsoever it comes, on 
one or on many, it expends itself there ; the remainder 
are released; they stand free, because another has re- 
ceived what equally threatened all. And so we advance 
in this life, as over a battle-field. We step over the 
fallen. We, in our turn, fall, and others step over us, 
but the battle goes endlessly on. It is the one condition 
of possession, of success, of achievement, of progress, 
of safety, in fact of everything we value, that some 
one or something be sacrificed. If the operation of 
that tremendous principle were to stop, everything 
would stop, an insurmountable bar would hold all 
things back. Something in the present must give, or 
something in the future will fail. Something here must 
make room, or something else cannot literally " take 
place." Something must suffer or die, or suffering and 
death will be felt where it will work universal ruin. 
Unless either finds its true object upon which to centre, 



15 



the bewilderment of irregularity ensues. " It is expe- 
dient for us," said Caiaphas, " that one man should die 
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." 
If, as we are now able to interpret him, such a being 
as Christ would go before, and receive into His own 
heart the fate ordained for all men, if it could but ex- 
pend itself upon Him, then the race was saved, the 
world was redeemed. The catastrophe of the future 
would be anticipated if He were to advance in front of 
all humanity, and let it fall upon Himself. And this 
was that very thing which He came to do. Caiaphas 
and his council thought that they had dragged Him to 
the judgment-hall and the cross against His will. How 
little did they comprehend the Being whom they en- 
compassed and delivered ! How little did they dream 
that the sacrifice was His own, not theirs — His volun- 
tary act, brought about by His supreme knowledge of 
our condition ! He saw our necessity, and met it Him- 
self. He saw what we needed, and He yielded that we 
might receive. He saw us in danger of perishing, and 
He perished Himself. He took the fatal and inevita- 
ble missile into His own heart. When He knelt that 
night, on the moonlit ground in Gethsemane, He bowed 
under the great and terrible law of sacrifice ; and when, 
on the cross, His sacred head dropped upon His breast 
in death, " It was finished," — the terrible law was en- 
tirely obeyed, and the race was free! Mankind was 
redeemed! 

And, therefore, while our tears come, they are 



16 

mingled tears of sorrow and of joy, of grief and of grati- 
tude. We cannot but feel our relief and exemption, 
even while we realize how much was suffered to obtain 
it. Dark and full of dread as Good Friday is, yet 
Easter is behind it; we cannot help seeing the light 
of Heaven beyond the Cross. 

I know very well that this exposition of a great 
principle does not explain all its mystery, nor develop 
all its truth, so far as it finds a supreme example in 
Him who redeemed mankind. But the fact that it 
was enunciated in the interest of a nation, and was 
given its opportunity to compass the infinite result it 
did under the apparently finite form of a national 
sacrifice, although, " not for that nation only," brings 
it to the very doors of our hearts to-day. 

By a singular coincidence of time and circumstance, 
we are looking at the stupendous redemption of our 
nation, worked by this self-same principle of vicarious 
sacrifice. And so deep is the issue involved, and so 
great is the salvation we feel, that it is not an irreve- 
rent association to put the sacrifice which has saved our 
country beside that which has saved the world. They 
are both in the line of the same Providential order, 
although one is an immeasurable distance behind the 
other. For it has not been the cause of an empire 
intent upon conquest, or upon saving itself from de- 
struction. It is a cause which stands alone in history. 
There is no precedent for it but one, — the cause of 
that very nation for which the High Priest would have 



17 

had Jesus to die. It is a cause in which not only our 
own present interests are concerned, but on which the 
hope of all humanity hangs. Everything most dear to 
suffering millions, everything most near to human en- 
lightenment and progress was brought up to the front 
and ventured when this nation breasted the onset of 
war for its life. The Hebrew Commonwealth "in 
which all the families of the earth were to be blest," 
was not more a part of the whole world's concern than 
is this Republic. There has been no other people and 
no other cause, save one, for which Christ himself 
could so soon have come and died. 

And yet it did not require such a stupendous and 
superhuman sacrifice. Human nature was equal to 
the effort. There was not wanting among us that mao-. 
nificent spirit which went forth willingly and eagerly 
to suffering and cruel wounds and bloody death, in 
order that " the whole nation should perish not." 
There were not wanting tens of thousands who, if it 
were " expedient," would " die for the people." It is 
they who went in the great advance, and breasted the 
inevitable fate that was rushing upon us, and bowed 
before the storm of lead and iron, and received the 
whole force and virulence of treason and rebellion into 
their own hearts. The power to injure and endanger 
has spent itself upon them! 

Oh, see the cross! the cross of our country's sacrifice 
and salvation! A thousand blood-stained battle-fields 
scattered over the land. Trenches piled with dead. 



18 

Graveyards as newly and thickly sown as the fields 
of spring with corn. Whitening bones nnsepnlchred. 
Gaunt skeletons of famine. Hospitals in endless pa- 
vilions, roofing countless numbers of broken and dying 
men. Streets filled with the maimed and the muti- 
lated. Houses full of bereaved and bleeding hearts : 
mothers mourning their sons unreturned, wives weep- 
ing for husbands lying in bloody graves, sisters wailing 
the loss of brothers, the little infant playing with its 
dead father's sword. Behold our cross of sacrifice, a 
cross borne also for all humanity. 

And yet contained within it all is national salvation, 
the redemption of our people, their resurrection to a 
yet greater life, their inspiration to a yet nobler pur- 
pose. The Easter Sun of the Republic is already 
dawning. The day of peace and joy and prosperity is 
at hand. The Kingdom is come ! Let it bring heal- 
ing to the broken-hearted, deliverance to the captives, 
sight to the blind, liberty to the bruised. Let it grow 
till every throne is made to fall, and every people is 
lifted out of the mire. Let it grow " till all men 
everywhere are free." 

Let our country and our cause grow till humanity 
itself can go no further, till it develops that nobility in 
man which will ally it with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
Let our Republic grow, let its spirit of humanity and 
of sacrifice expand, till Christ adopts it for His own, — 
His very people, of whom He was ideally born, and for 
whom He suffered and died, — the people of His choice 
and His love, — the people not of His disappointment, 
but of His glory. 



AN ADDRESS 



Delivered ox Easter Morning, April 16, 1865, the Day after the 
Intelligence was received of the President's Assassination. 



I have no heart to speak, — nor have you to hear. 1 
put aside all that I had prepared to say, and turn to 
that which has filled us with such unspeakable grief 
and unspeakable consternation. Our day of jubilee, 
our Easter, so auspicious for our country, so bloodily 
redeemed, a day when hearts were to be happier and 
faces brighter, because the Prince of Peace had so 
really come, our day of jubilee is a day of tears, lamen- 
tation, and great mourning. The emblems of sorrow 
and death accompany the emblems of joy and life. The 
interests of the temporal and the interests of the eter- 
nal here mingle together without incongruity, bat with 
added beauty, because they are not incongruous inte- 
rests. Our hearts love our country, even while they 
hope for eternity. 

Little did I think, my brethren, last Sunday night, 
as I laid before you the great and pervading principle 
of sacrifice, and tried to show that it was the terrible 
law of nature that no advance or progress could be 



20 

made but over a field of blood, and that our country had 
moved on to its new epoch over the bleeding forms of 
so many hundred thousand men, little did I think that, 
before the week was out, we should have to pass over 
the bleeding, lifeless body of our President. Little did 
I think that words only accommodated to the crisis of 
the day, and only in principle coincident with it, would 
have such a literal fulfilment : 

" IT IS EXPEDIENT FOR US THAT ONE MAN SHOULD DIE FOR 
THE PEOPLE, AND THAT THE WHOLE NATION PERISH NOT." 

In the decree of that Providence which has carried 
us so far, even this unexpected concentration of the 
principle upon one in whom every interest of the nation 
had centred, has become necessary, and the only con- 
solation we have is, that in some mysterious way the 
death of Abraham Lincoln will work a greater result 
than his life. 

But the consummate sacrifice of the war has been 
reached. No higher price can be paid. We have lost 
our President — lost him just as the mind of the whole 
people at last understood, appreciated, and approved 
him — lost him just a& the heart of the whole people 
began to love him, and all consciously began to lean 
on him. 

In this whole land there was no such centre and 
cynosure as that one man. The doubts, the suspicions, 
the contentions, the strifes of four political and dis- 
tracted years had at last subsided and disappeared. 
The unfolding of our history had justified the choice of 



21 

the people. It had proved to be a choice influenced 
by something above mere human wisdom. It had 
proved to be an inspiration of God. Nothing else had 
carried us through, the fast-occurring critical moments 
of this period but the moral qualities of the chosen 
Executive. No one had dreamed of their depth ; no 
one knew how wonderfully they would control and 
sustain his judicious mind. 

But the event developed and manifested him. Par- 
ties and policies became bygones. He went on in ad- 
vance of them, and stood before us all in the sweet 
atmosphere of Peace. We looked with astonishment 
upon his modest, unostentatious, undated figure, sur- 
rounded by the greatest of historic triumphs. But he 
acted on the instinct of his character and of his posi- 
tion. He was only the man of the people, not their 
monarch. 

And how deeply the people appreciated it! How 
loud were their shouts and hosannas ! It was a sud- 
den recognition of intrinsic greatness and goodness, 
as it passed over the crest of a great epoch, and drew 
near the glorious end, and they connected it properly, 
but vaguely, with the Providential aspects of their 
cause. They were ready to spread their garments in 
his way. A new feeling took possession of them. A 
religious impulse seized them. Never were a people 
or their ruler so devout, or so full of touching ascrip- 
tions of praise and thanksgiving to God. The air re- 
sounded with hymns to the Almighty as their Saviour 



99 



and Deliverer. A solemnity of feeling grew, as if they 
stood in the presence of a stupendous miracle, and be- 
held the evolution of a distinct and conspicuous Provi- 
dence. 

And all this gathered round one who seemed to bear 
in his innermost heart the simplicity and honesty of a 
child, even while, as we now perceive, he was carrying 
out the purposes of God. 

It used to be said that the peculiar sentiment of love 
and loyalty which is felt by a nation for its hereditary 
king, as the representative of a perpetual dynasty, and 
as the invested of God with a right to rule, could not 
be felt for an ephemeral and political President. He 
was only an official, — an almost abstract executive, — 
an honorary excellency only, — no supreme, permanent, 
or universal object of regard. In a brief period he 
would sink out of sight into private life, with no fur- 
ther claim upon his country than as having been its 
faithful servant. 

But what do we see to-day 1 Our once official and 
merely executive President has become so identified 
with our hearts that we cannot separate him from our- 
selves. It is among the strangest of the many strange 
developments of the democratic principle. The man of 
the people can grow so close to the heart of the people 
that he would become the unconscious inmate of every 
household, an invisible member of every family, one 
whom it is the instinct of all to love, and the habit of 
all to lean on for support. 



23 

It was even this that our President had become. 
Through four years of dreadful peril, uncertainty, and 
conflict, he had pursued his simple, dutiful, and faith- 
ful course, and at last the moment arrived when he had 
vindicated the cause of his country, and the majesty of 
its government. It was confirmation enough. It was 
occasion enough for gratitude and love. 

And then appeared that touching exhibition of 
mercy and magnanimity, which has moved us all, and 
which has so ennobled our cause. He held out the 
arms of the government and people in an invitation to 
return. He held out the promise of forgiveness and 
restoration. He uttered the sweetness of his own 
earnest, generous heart, till he carried our hearts with 
his, and it seemed as if even the heart of the alien 
could no longer withstand or refuse. 

We were prepared by him for everything that was 
noble, merciful, and magnanimous. Our own unembit- 
tered spirit, despite all our sacrifices, coalesced round 
his. He became the expression of our feeling and our 
wish. We lived and breathed, nationally, through him. 
We were not aware, I repeat, how close a personal 
affection had grown in us toward him. We did not 
realize how every interest we had centred in him. Un- 
consciously, as I say, he had become a part of our family 
ancl household. And, therefore, when yesterday morn- 
ing we rose from our beds, roused by the alarming note 
of evil news, and we were told that the President was 
dead, dead by violence and murder, we felt sick, and 



24 

stunned with consternation and grief. Each one took 
the sorrow into his own heart. Each one was over- 
whelmed in his own consciousness. No one looked to 
the next one to interpret the catastrophe. There was 
no contagion of a common sorrow. The husband sunk 
down by himself in bewilderment and despair. The 
wife wept alone by herself in equal astonishment and 
grief. Every household mourned. Every family was 
bereaved. It seemed as if a near sorrow had de- 
scended upon every one. The feeling was felt under 
every roof that a death had occurred in the house, and 
that a member of the family had gone. " There was 
not a house where there was not one dead !" 

Oh, the sadness and sorrow of yesterday ! Who can 
forget it \ Everywhere men acted like the stricken and 
bereaved. They closed their offices and stores ; they 
gave up their business; they wandered restlessly about; 
their reddened eyes told of the hot tears of recent weep- 
ing ; their depressed and yet excited, often fierce faces, 
told of unutterable grief and indignation. Least of all 
as an indication were the emblems of mourning that 
were almost instantly hung out amid the folds of the 
flag and the twinings of the national colors. One needed 
not to look up at the windows, and their sable decora- 
tions, for evidences of the universal sorrow. It was 
more apparent in every face that passed by than in all 
that array of flags at half-mast, and all that gloomy 
upholstery of woe. 

The garlands and rejoicings of Palm Sunday had gone, 



25 



— the cross, the blood, the sacrifice, the darkness, and 
the despair of Good Friday had come. Treason and re- 
bellion had taken a Judas shape. They had come up 
again, but stealthily, like Satan discomfited. The spirit 
that could take pride in holding four millions of human 
beings in bondage forever ; the spirit that could strike 
down a helpless Senator in the national halls, and ap- 
plaud the act; the spirit that could so wantonly rebel 
against rightful and constituted authority ; that could, 
for so little reason, turn against a once-beloved Repub- 
lic ; that could rejoice in firing upon its flag and in 
trampling the holy symbol under foot ; the spirit that 
could mutilate the dead, massacre garrisons, mine pri- 
sons, and set fire to cities in the night ; the spirit that 
could starve to death uncounted thousands of prisoners 
of war, — is the self -same spirit that stole into the hea- 
ven of our peace, and struck the unsuspecting, con- 
fiding President from behind, — and that struck the 
Secretary, when lying broken, wounded, and helpless 
in his bed. 

That was our Good Friday as a people. We were 
astonished, and suddenly cast down. For not to other 
and untried hands were we yet prepared to transfer 
what had become so entirely his individual work. All 
day yesterday it seemed, as it did to the disciples of old, 
that all was over ; that our cause had been committed 
to hopeless burial.* For no more than they could we 

* It will be borne in mind that the disciples themselves had nol identi- 
fied their Master with anything higher than a material kingdom. 



26 

understand it. But the third day explained that in- 
finite catastrophe, and a future day will explain this. 
Our national Easter will surely come. Our cause will 
rise again more beautiful, more noble, for the sacrifice. 
We know not what Providence intends that we shall 
suffer, nor what disappointments may come, nor how 
many hopes will be deferred. But the past is the 
guarantee of the future. The same Providence who 
has so conspicuously guided us thus far, will do for us 
and for our country all that is best. Remember, and 
take the consolation of the Divine coincidence — your 
greater anniversary is yet to come, perhaps it has 
already come. Let us wait in patience and in faith. 
Such an event as this has not occurred for nought. 
Let us hold our breath and wait. Let us watch the 
terrible vengeance, not of the people, but of God. Al- 
though we may pray, as our Master did, "Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do !" yet it 
was long ago they invoked the blood of our sacrifice, 
whatever it might be, upon themselves and their chil- 
dren. May it not be visited upon them further. May 
peace come without the price of their doom. May 
happiness come to us, to humanity, to the race, with- 
out the world beholding their Jerusalem a heap of 
stones, and their children perishing within it. 

But the judgments of God are stern and terrible. 
If there is still venom and vitality enough in a crushed 
cause to strike such a fang as this into the heart of 
a just and merciful man, the incarnation of a people's 






27 



kindliness, patience, and forbearance, if there is madness 
enough in an evil cause to strike down the very friend 
who would interpose forgiveness, what can we expect'? 
what can we not fear'? 

But oh, in the spirit of Christ, let us pray that the 
doom be averted, that its lightnings may pass harm- 
lessly from the cloud that overhangs us, and that 
the day will soon come when the skies will be clear, 
and . our people, under another Easter sun, will be 
found living together in unity, happiness, and peace. 



ADDRESS 

Delivered on Wednesday, April 19, 1865, at Noon, at the Fu- 
neral Service held in Unison with the Solemnities ok the 
Same Hour, in the National Capital. 



We are attending the funeral of the President of 
the United States. This service, in this crowded 
church, is as much his funeral service as that immense 
ceremonial attended by multitudes in the capital of 
the nation, immediately around his body. In every 
city, village, and hamlet of the land, as the hour of 
twelve has struck to-day, the people will have assem- 
bled in their temples of worship to observe the self- 
same expression of respect and sorrow which is being 
observed at Washington. It is a national funeral, and 
as the noon hour will advance westward, that gathering 
of the people will take place at successive stations, till, 
like a great forerunning preparation, it has made ready 
the way for the melancholy train which will bear his 
body westward to his home. 

The President returns for the first time after his 
setting out upon his great duty, with that duty per- 
formed ; but he returns a martyr. He will sleep in 



30 

the midst of his neighbors and friends unconscious of 
his work. It is among the most touching of the cir- 
cumstances attending his death, that it has occurred so 
instantly after his success had been achieved, and be- 
fore the well-earned compensation had come for so 
much labor, anxiety, patience, and courage. A feelino- 
of personal sympathy has gone out of every heart on 
this account, as well as the feeling of personal bereave- 
ment which every one has experienced. 

But who can measure our bitter disappointment as a 
people 1 The exclamation of the old prophet, under 
unexpected national calamity, would seem to have an 
equal meaning now: "We looked for peace, but no 
good came; and for a time of health, and behold 
trouble ! " 

During four years we have lived in the very din and 
confusion of one of those periods when the history of 
the world concentrates itself upon a single spot. For 
awhile we saw no order, and no development. We 
could only wait : chaos had come again. Misfortunes 
were thick about us. The nation was involved, before 
it knew, in a struggle so terrific, and in an undertak- 
ing so stupendous, that if the immensity only of the 
enterprise and the effort had been foreseen, no human 
counsel would have advised the course it took. But 
God led it on by its hopes and by its illusions till it 
could not go back, till it had awaked the latent powers 
of the people to an extent that the wildest dreamer of 
a democracy had never thought, till the cause grew 



31 

holier and holier as the pillar of cloud began to lead 
its hosts by day, and the pillar of fire by night. 

But for a long time the wisest brain at the head of 
the Government could see nothing but darkness, could 
feel nothing but that tense anxiety which the helms- 
man feels at night when he plunges with his ship into 
the dense gloom, and receives the heavy blows of the 
invisible surges, and knows not for how long, nor how 
enduringly, and there is only the tender gleam of the 
binnacle-light, beneath his hand, between him and the 
bottom of the sea. But the night ended, the darkness 
lifted, the day began to break, the light on the needle 
was no longer the light of reason and of hope, but the 
light of God. 

There came a moment when, instead of the slow 
and painful progress of the Government armies, en- 
veloping a city here and there, and redeeming terri- 
tory now in the east and now in the west, there came 
a moment when the whole Atlantic coast was swept 
into our possession almost in an instant, when the capi- 
tal of the counterfeit Republic fell, when its armies 
capitulated, when the chieftain, in whom lay their 
whole military hope, was a prisoner, when the Confe- 
deracy could nowhere be found. It had evaporated 
away _it had broken like a bubble— and, "like the 
baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wreck behind !" 

What could we do in the hour of such results, and 
the sudden collapse of what had vaunted itself a 
mighty government, a separate country, and an uncon- 
querable cause, but stand and stare with breathless 



32 



awe, and say as we grasped our neighbor's hand, 
"What hath God wrought!" 

How full our hearts were of joy and expectation! 
" We looked for Peace!" How beautiful was the word 
to us! All we asked was to go back to the halcyon 
days of awhile ago, and never see a military figure in 
the street, nor read of a battle or siege in the news- 
print. After all the heroism and excitement which 
has stirred our blood, we could desire even this, that 
all should subside into quiet, that our armies should 
dissolve, and our soldiers turn from the weapons of 
strife to the implements of industry and peace. We 
felt as if an angel's wing had swept over our land, and 
the smile of love and reconciliation was upon our faces 
as we turned them toward the South. 

" We looked for Health /" We thought we had cured 
the disease by the cruel surgery to which we had been 
compelled. We thought we had destroyed that can- 
cerous affection which had eaten into the heart of many 
a noble Southerner, and turned him away from the 
Constitution of his fathers. We thought we had 
awaked the spirit of true nationality, and developed 
our people into a spirit of widest humanity. We 
thought we had come to the hour for true ideas, and 
divine conceptions of duty. Before this war had bro- 
ken out, the splendid manhood which makes nations 
great was latent and unknown among us, in danger of 
being softened by prosperity and perverted by pride. 
But now the very deep of the human heart had spoken. 



33 



The noblest principle on earth, the principle of sacri- 
fice, had sprung forth. In everything we were en- 
larged and enlightened. We had been brought by 
trial and suffering back to the era of the Revolution, 
and were made to live that anxiety over again. The 
bloody baptism was repeated, and we had been born 
anew into a love of country so deep that it was the 
nearest thought of every heart, and so universal that 
the national flag floated from every house. " We 
looked for health," — and felt the time was close at 
hand when the regenerate South would thank the 
Providence which had chastened it, and had removed 
the house of bondage from its midst, and when, shoul- 
der to shoulder with the North, it would advance to 
the consummation of the work which both North and 
South, as one Republic, had been given to do. 

But were we in danger of " healing the hurt of the 
daughter of God's people slightly V Were we crying 
" Peace ! peace ! when there is no peace ?" 

Let the recent experience of the people admonish 
and warn. 

We are never so far within the counsels of Provi- 
dence that we can foretell anything with certainty. 
This, at least, we had thought, that we had got beyond 
the hour for reverses. But the mistake is nothing new. 
God always visits with adversity in an unexpected form. 
That member of the family dies with whom death was 
never associated. That form of affliction comes which 
was never apprehended. The image of a great battle, 



34 

with whole square miles of soil drenched with blood 
and strewn with dead, was the only form in which we 
could put a calamity that would bereave the people. 
And then, in the moment of our security and bright 
expectation and happy feeling that the end had come, 
one man among us, the very one whose office it had 
been the effort of all these battles and all these lives to 
uphold, falls forward dead, — killed by the alien cause 
in the hour of its weakness, but unconquerable malig- 
nity. To our speechless consternation our President 
was dead ! " We looked for peace, but no good came, 
and for a time of health, but behold, trouble!" 

What can the calamity mean'? What is it for? 

I suppose, after the first emotion of astonishment and 
grief, that which took deepest possession of the public 
mind was horror and indignation. And this, hereafter, 
will be the permanent feeling, the characteristic and the 
effective one. After the pain of bereavement has passed, 
the conviction of injury and crime comes up and takes 
its immovable station in the national heart. The nation 
has been struck a blow more dreadful than all others 
together in this long struggle with its assassinating foes. 
All the collisions of more than a thousand battle-fields 
have not shaken the country so much as this in the 
midst of the capital. All the thunders of ten thousand 
cannon have been empty noise beside that one pistol- 
shot. All the blood of four hundred thousand lives 
has not been grieved for so much as that which has 
trickled from a single wound. If all the households in 



35 

this city which have been privately bereaved were to 

darken their windows, and drape their dwellings, the 
symbols of mourning would be far fewer than they are 
to-iiay. 

The nation has been injured: the people have been 

smitten. That one man, clothed and dignified by his 
imperial office, was of more worth than a million lives. 
not because of his personal greatness, but because of 
his official position, — because the country and the cause 
were represented, for the time, by him. It is not Abra- 
ham Lincoln, only, it is the President who has been 
murdered. Treason and rebellion would not have been 
guilty of half their crime, had they fought on the bat- 
tle-field and stopped short of this; but now their guilt 
is consummate and inexpiable. Now an inexorable prin- 
ciple is let loose, the majesty of the law rises up, the 
righteous indignation of the people bursts forth. Not 
only must the man be avenged, but the Pkesident! 
Avenge does not mean revenge. Avengement is justice 
done, the right vindicated. We stand and tremble us 
we see this stern duty darkening the countenance of 
the Government. We feel a fearful anxiety as we see 
the beautiful development of forgiveness and concilia- 
tion suddenly broken, and another and different de- 
velopment smouldering in the secret counsels of the 
nation. Whatever it be, God wills it in His infinite 
wisdom. A greater good must be coming from this 
than could have come from that. But this hour of sus- 
pense is an hour of apprehension. It may be that less 



36 

severity of measures will issue out of this than we fear, 
but the dreadful character of this final result of the re- 
bellion cannot but have its positive effect upon the na- 
tion. The best result that we can foresee, and it is one 
which a former policy could never have brought about 
with such ungenerous foes, is not only the annihilation 
of the rebellion, and the rebuke of treason, but the mer- 
ciless extinguishment of the sentiment in which they origi- 
nated. "Whether by execution, or expatriation, those 
minds will be removed from our midst in whom the in- 
fernal flame burns, and w T ill burn so long as they live 
or remain. And this may be the great blessing which 
Providence designs: a more perfect success, a more posi- 
tive union, a more unanimous people than we could 
possibly have expected or otherwise had. 

"The something that was to astonish the world," 
the plot for the simultaneous assassination of every 
high officer of the Government, and the sudden over- 
throw of its power in the confusion, has failed. It has 
touched but one, and his place is instantly filled. All 
the other great minds in whom the crisis lay, and from 
whom the epoch was issuing, are safe, — safe beyond 
peradventure or peril. 

We do not realize the calamity we have been saved 
from, nor the inextricable difficulties in which we might 
have been involved. And we are not as grateful as 
we have reason to be to Him whose protecting hand 
has been so marvellously over and near us. 

It will be as much the work of the historian here- 



37 

after to count up our providences as to recount our 
fortunes — so many, so peculiar, and so conspicuous 
have they been. The fact has been seen by the people, 
and it has touched the popular heart. We praise God 
with our first breath of joy at good news. Praise Him 
now, in this hour of calamity, that it is not as horrible 
as it might have been. 

There are certain ulterior consequences of this event 
which we cannot clearly anticipate, because they will be 
the peculiar development of a national system which 
refers so much to the people. A public sorrow in such 
a country as ours touches the whole people just as 
poignantly as a private sorrow touches an individual. 
And this is only one of the many new things which are 
daily coming to the surface with us. We see what the 
appeal of patriotism to the intuition and heart of the 
masses has done. We see the many singular virtues 
which have been brought to light in the passage of a 
people through the ordeal of political strife and civil 
war. We may expect, therefore, that this fearful visi- 
tation will have a most extraordinary and secret work- 
inff in the public mind. We know not, in the strange- 
ness of the free human nature of this land, how it has 
o-one or will go to the heart of the individual citizen 
we never saw. We cannot foretell its mysterious 
agency, as it will keep ramifying about under the sur- 
face among twenty millions of people. But you may 
rely upon it, that it will be a slumbering fire for many 
years to come, stealing from heart to heart as the secret 



38 



attendant of the Holy Ghost, and burning its way for 
a good, we Know not what. 

It will be the tragic story of our history. Mothers 
will toll it to their children, and as the spirit of patriot- 
ism has been instilled, from generation to generation, 
by the traditions of the great Washington, so will the 
spirit of simplicity and honesty and sacrifice be dis- 
tilled into the hearts of the many millions yet unborn 
who are to carry this Republic on, as the tradition of 
the good Lincoln is dropped from the lips of the fathers 
to their children. 

The figure of that man who now lies dead in the 
midst of his people, will be in the days to come, the 
most symmetrical finish to the development in which we 
live. His virtues will be remembered with astonish- 
ment. His rude features will be idealized by art till 
nothing but the greatness and beauty of his character 
will shine through them. History will delight for once 
in the romance of goodness, and in detailing the self- 
devotion and triumph of principle. The blaze of this 
wonderful era will surround him with a glory of which 
he never dreamed, but which he has fully deserved. 

And now our hearts recur to him as he lies at this 
hour, embalmed and coffined, sorrowed and mourned, 
by the high officers of the Government, its great states- 
men and great generals, and a dense multitude of the 
people- 
He has left behind the benediction of his just and 
patient spirit. He has left behind a country delivered 



and redeemed, I i< hn i lefl behind .1 < an *c triumphant 
and glorious. At the close of this week, as his funeral 
train moves slowly through youi streets, uw ovei youi 
heads in reverence for him whom God rained up to be 
the saviour <»i his country, and whom God has taken 
away thai his people might be united, and his work 
more mighl ily finished. 

Look on that train, as if pasi es bj as il il were led 
by the hand of Providence. Look mi [\ as the j mbol 
and the reality together of the whole nation's mourn 
ing and desolation, suffered now for four lona yeai 
Look on it, and praj tlial it may be the end of the 
calamity, the end of the sacrifice. 

He will lie on Sunday next in [ndependcnci II. ill 
The history of the tuition began in that room, and con 
tinues to flow through it, to this day. Nothing na 
tional occurs but that sacred chamber shari it It 
has appeared in this very period almo 1 as con ipi< 11 
ously as in the first war for Kberty. 'I hrough a popu 
lar instinct, the President itood there in the dark 
days before his on, but on an auspiciou 

anniversary, and with hu trong hands n 

the national ensign on high. Bi ftlmo I 

prophet: lit of i 

I 

in that room, and - I 

country/" said he. u cannot 
that principle. I was abc I I 
be assassinated on the spot tha 



40 

said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if 
it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by." 

And now, by a most appropriate provision, the fune- 
ral train will rest in this city on the coming hallowed 
clay, and he will lie in his martyrdom in that historic 
hall, sleeping amid the memories of eighty-nine won- 
derful years, dumb and unconscious as the great bell* 
at his head ; but the world will never forget that he 
sounded the note of liberty, and rung out the joy of a 
nation redeemed, before the strength of his honest 
heart was broken. 

In a new meaning of the old royal formula he will 
" sleep with his fathers,"— the fathers of the republic,— 
with their shades looking down from the walls upon 
him, simple, devoted as chey, having given his life in 
the cause for which they pledged their lives, their for- 
tunes, and their sacred honor. 

But he goes to his grave near by his humble home, 
with no assemblage of bygone kings to keep him com- 
pany, and therefore it may be better said of him, " he 
sleeps with his children :"— the Mississippi flat-boatman 
in a coffin worthy of a monarch,— the plain man of 
the people thronged about and wept for by millions of 
hearts! True instance of the genius of our Republic! 
glorious instance of worth, first seen and first declared 
by a majority, and now perceived and acknowledged 

* Tlic original bell which was rung at the moment of the signing of the 
great Declaration, hut which is now broken, stands on a pedestal in the 

hall. 



41 

by all! — terrible instance of that inevitable law of sacri- 
fice under which he must fall who stands foremost for 
the right, and who most earnestly opposes wrong ! 



May this historic martyrdom make us a people loyal 
to God, as well as to man. May we rise higher and 
higher in character as a nation. Above all, may it 
bring us closer to another and infinite Sacrifice, which 
was for all nations and for all time, even of One who 
fulfilled in His death the issues of eternity and of the 
soul. And at last may it bring such an acclaim to 
Him, the Lord of all, that His kingdom may fully 
come ; and, as we lift and unfurl our country's standard 
before men, in a grateful future, may it be to display 
the Cross in the midst of the stars. 



My 13 






1 



